Another clerk at the convenience store

another clerk at the convenience store

fiction
Edward w Pritchard

Three hundred and sixty five days a year the customers are irritated with you if you are a little over weight and take in money, clean, cook their budget gourmet coffee, and change the waste container liners outside by the gas pumps at the large well lit convenience store here on South Main Street in Akron. Sometimes in the middle of the shift Medari the general manager will send me to his other gas station in Kent to take them change or something like that so they don't run out of unrolled nickels or quarters. I have to take my own car and Medari never pays me for gas. Sometimes I feel invisible to the customers.

I know that I am not pretty enough to work at the Star Bucks where the crew splits up tips and jokes around with each other while they go about their working rushing to and fro at hyper speed. Maybe I shouldn't eat so much junk food during work but my job can be stressful. These salesmen come in and I'll have a long line of irritated women late for work and the handsome delivery guys will pull their Pepsi Trucks trucks right into the middle of the lot and block all the pumps and then demand that we count and verify their delivery priority one.

It's seems like it's always winter or raining here in Ohio. Usually I don't have time to pull on a coat when the trash containers are full to overflow out near the gas pumps and my feet always seem to be a little wet and slushy.

My shift starts at six AM. Only you have to be in at 5:45 to review stock before you start and count the drawers. I quit at 2PM. Only if it's 2:15 sometimes Medari will trick me into driving up to the Kent station because Sally the assistant manager, his close friend that his wife the RN doesn't know about is sick for the second time this week and no else had time to make it to the Bank and I have to drive up and do their deposits for them.

About six thirty AM the older people come in to to buy lottery. They talk and talk about their daughters in Illinois or their sons five miles across town who are always too busy with their wives families to see them at Holidays. Old people at least want to know if you have a name and then they always remember it for years and years and call you by name when you hold up the line of irritated women late for work to sell them lottery. Old people don't understand the concept of random numbers. Each one has a theory about special numbers that are lucky to them like, six, seven, three, eighteen or twenty seven their football shirt number back in high school in 1955. Old people never tip when a lucky one of them finally wins fifty or seventy five dollars at lottery.

If I was pretty and sexy I would like to be able to work as the bar girl at the counter at a sports bar and sell Keno cards to handsome men and have them give me hundred dollar tips when they won a thousand or two. I would joke with them about how tough life is while they drank beer and followed me about with their eyes as they waited for their pizza orders to take home to their families. If the owner hassled me there at the sports bar I would tell them to screw themselves and they would have to take it and be nice with me because all the men customers would only come to our bar because of me. If I quit waitressing the owner would know half his customers would follow me to the next place down the road to buy their beer and keno tickets.

After work I head on home to take care of my Mom who is handicapped and just watches television all day. Her and I have a lot of special cable series shows that we watch each specific night of the week. Sometimes I will get us fast food because both of us are  always on diets. My brother never manages to stop by to help with Mom. He lives over In Kent and his wife is a princess who needs to be catered to. She doesn't see Mom except when Mom is taken by ambulance to the Hospital. Usually my brother brings ribs or buffalo wings when he does finally stop by to give me a break from taking care of Mom.

If I was pretty and sexy I would like to be one of the service girls at the Lexus dealership who write up the repair orders for the handsome men. I would know a lot about car repairs and be able to astound everyone with my diagnosis's. I would joke with all the mechanics and a few of the good looking salesmen would call and text me on weekends. Or if I was pretty and smart I would be one of the women Doctors over at the Hospitals who help with the sick children.
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